Shows›The Jacobsen Group with Jon Jacobsen›KXEL Presents: The Jacobsen Group Podcast – July 12, 2025›Transcript

Transcript

KXEL Presents: The Jacobsen Group Podcast – July 12, 2025

The Jacobsen Group with Jon Jacobsen · Wed Jul 16, 2025

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Thanks.

Hi, and welcome to our show.

I'm Justin Clark, the Menard Family Professor of Philosophy and Ethics, and I'm joined by Peter Jacobson, the Guartney Professor of Economic Education and Research, and Russ McCullough, founder of the Guartney Institute and Wayne Angel, Distinguished Chair of Economics.

And I'm going to throw it over to Russ to introduce our guest.

All right, so we have, once again, Dr. Levi Russell, who probably now is passing Rachel Ferguson as the most number of times as a guest even after leaving.

I'm guessing after this.

So he is associate teaching professor in the School of Business at the University of Kansas.

So he's a J-Hawk, even has a J-Hawk hat on today, I saw.

He teaches managerial economics and foundations and business.

And today's topic, especially this is pertinent that Levi's research is in Catholics,

social teaching, political economy and economics of risk.

And so he was the original co-founder of the Faith in Economics podcast with me.

And so Levi, it's great to have you on.

Thanks, appreciate it.

All right.

So big news, the white smoke goes up a while back and we have a new pope.

So we thought you being our Catholic expert in Ottawa, at least that I know, I'm sure the priests down the road would have something to say on it as well.

But what's the deal with our new pope?

Yeah, so it's interesting, you know, and several things were, I think, fairly surprising for people with this particular election.

So his name is Robert Prevost or Prevost or something like that.

He's kind of just like a Midwestern sort of guy.

It's kind of funny to hear somebody speak Latin with like a Chicago accent, you know.

But

So he was, you know, most recently a bishop and then a cardinal.

He spent a lot of time in Peru, I think a couple of decades.

Yeah, it's

taken 20 years.

I remember that.

You know, he's, I think he's an Augustinian.

So it's the order of Greece that he comes from, St.

Augustine, that sort of thing.

He's an interesting sort of guy.

So most people, I think, would say, would have said that, you know, we're going to get a pope from Africa.

or maybe even Asia, somewhere, you know, the sort of the global south, right, is the term.

Of course, you know, Pope Francis was our first South American pope.

And, you know, for a good 500 years or so, we had almost all Italian popes, you know, in the sort of early modern period.

So Cardinal Prewell's story now, Pope Leo XIV.

I think it's interesting that they chose him.

And I think potentially there's some indication that

you know, just in the sort of politics of the Cardinals and stuff like that.

There's some indication that, you know, this is sort of like, you know, a move towards a focus on the West a little bit more, maybe a little bit more of a balanced kind of treatment where, you know, Pope Francis' focus for the last, I think, 13 years.

certainly on, I guess we can call the global south, right?

Developing countries, you know, his two social encyclicals were really kind of heavily pushed that direction and talked a lot about immigration and refugees and sort of that sort of thing.

But, you know, picking a guy from Chicago is at least to some extent sort of a sign of someone with a lot of experience in Latin America, but also, you know, someone who obviously has a lot of affinity for his own home and sort of thing.

I think that there's at least potentially this kind of

you know, from the political perspective, kind of a push kind of back to center, maybe, or however you want to say that.

And then certainly indicators of that, you know, immediately upon his election.

So hope Francis came out not.

you know, they come out on the, you know, whatever that thing, the balcony.

I don't know what's called.

I'm sure there's some Italian name for it.

I don't know.

But yeah, the portico.

Yeah, there you go.

It comes out and he's got Pope Leo's wearing a lot of the same sort of thing.

The Pope Benedict, the 16th war, and it really pups.

for a very long time war.

Pope Francis kind of broke that tradition a little bit.

And he's also living in, they call it the palace, right?

But it's, you

know,

his room is actually pretty modest, but he does live in the papal palace, whereas Pope Francis kind of lived farther away, you know, in a, you know, what, what didn't

think seem like quite as night in the place.

So kind of, you know, just back to kind of regular order with, you know, JP2 and with Pope Benedict XVI and kind of continuity or at least signs of continuity on kind of the visible parts of what's going on so far.

Also as a theologian too, because that was kind of a departure is that Francis wasn't a trained, I mean, he's obviously a theologian to some extent, but he wasn't trained theologian and pre-boss like Benedict is like a scholar, right?

He's got a dissertation out there.

Yeah, and Primoz is a mathematician, I think.

I was gonna say he was a math

something.

I don't know how high, but he's a smart guy.

Yeah, so yeah, it was interesting.

Yeah, you're right.

Very much more of kind of a, you know, I guess you'd say theological or academic.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah.

Well, the big thing is, you know, Pope Leo versus Ditka.

Do you know what I'm referencing?

was a

Saturday.

Oh, yeah.

I hadn't heard anybody throw that out yet.

So I thought our podcast maybe somebody has

done.

I saw somebody.

What's that mascot, the Philly, the fanatic, right?

Oh, yeah.

He went to a game, I guess a game in Chicago.

I'm not really sure I'm not a baseball guy, but he went to a baseball game and he was dressed as the Pope, you know, right after Pope Leo's election.

So they were kind of, you know, doing a.

little goofy homage.

And Socks or Cubs, did that ever come out?

Because I remember that being, I don't know the answer, but it was a big deal for Chicago people as he liked Socks or Cubs.

Yeah, I don't know.

His

brother, fairly vocal recently, like he was on a couple of different podcasts or something like that, talking about, you know, talking about his brother, you know, his brother's the Pope now.

And, you know, and it was, they said, there was a story like after

After the white smoke went up and he was elected, you know, he goes to his apartment and he tries to call his, tries to call his brother and his brother ghosted him for like two hours.

He finally took his call.

You know, the Pope's trying to call him.

The Pope's calling you and you're just skipping the call.

All right.

Reject.

Yeah.

I'm busy right now.

Span.

Yeah.

Oh no.

I have a question which I think

would probably help our listeners too, which is I think a lot of people understand, okay, when the white smoke comes up, we have a new pope and they vaguely understand that the College of Cardinals is doing the voting.

But like when people, when we have a new president in the US, people have some idea about like, what the role of the president is and what they can do.

So can you go into a little bit about like,

and what the actual functional role of the pope is in the organization and what kind of like powers and responsibilities they have.

Sure.

Yeah, so obviously the word pope comes from, I guess Italian means papa means your father, right?

And so, you know, he's the, we would say the visible head of the church on earth, right?

So he's the vicar of Christ.

And so the organization is to some extent centralized.

The pope has responsibilities for

Managing kind of on a practical level the kind of the bigger efforts of the church as a, you know, as a worldwide type of entity.

But I am not super knowledgeable on all of the specific things, but a lot of

A lot of the different pieces are, you know, we have, you know, a whole group of cardinals that are and other people as well that are tasked with kind of looking at doctrinal issues, things like that.

You have another group of people that are dealing with charity aspects of the church, that whole aspect, the kind of the material needs of the people.

But I would say an interesting element of this for him is, you know, kind of addressing the important issues of the age.

right?

And so people might remember, you know, JP2 and communism, right?

So you got JP2 and some of the Western leaders sort of taking on fall, you know, the fall of the Berlin Wall, all of that sort of hope.

Benedict, I was like a baby Catholic.

You did a lot of with a faller.

No, Benedict.

Oh, Benedict.

He did a

lot with the relations between the traditional liturgy and the new liturgy.

Yeah, sure.

So a lot of liturgy stuff.

And I think in general, in the last 30 or 40 years, there's been a real push to try to reunite with the East.

Yeah.

So, you know, there's been a concerted effort for a lot of what in the past were Orthodox churches have kind of come what we call coming to communion with the Catholic Church.

So now they're sort of their bishops are underneath the authority of the Pope.

whereas they weren't before.

So there's a lot of pushing and prevost or Pope Leo is really pushing that I think even more.

So there's a lot of kind of, I guess you can call it international relations or I guess interfaith relations, right?

That sort of thing.

So it is the name that he took, Leo the 14.

This is usually an indicator, kind of a focus or an homage to someone else that they

you know, that person as a cardinal, right?

Cardinal pre-boss thought was important or something noteworthy that that Pope did in his time that he wants to take that name because he's going to carry on that tradition or he's going to focus on that same thing.

So Catholic social teaching, something I'm interested in, something I've been interested in for quite a while.

Give a general

definition of Catholic social teaching.

Yeah.

So basically it's the way I look at it is it's kind of like

What is the kind of political view or what is the kind of social organization that makes sense given what we believe about morality and ethics and our faith, right?

So how should people treat each other, right?

And whether that's, you know, just friendship or something like that, or whether it's in these more complicated things like commercial relations or government, right?

So it has a lot to say about policy.

It has a lot to say about, you know, how people ought to act as business people, right?

and so you know over time as you know and obviously as our technology has changed right in economics we talk a lot about technology.

Pope Leo XIII was Pope in the late 1800s and he was the first

to address these kind of issues on a really high level.

And so getting to just a specific question, one of the things the Pope does is he writes what are called encyclical letters.

They're kind of long, these days they're really long, long letters about a specific issue and what he wants to do as far as setting the kind of moral foundations for that thing or applying things, you know, how ought we to think about how this stuff works.

And so hopefully on the 13th row, encyclical called Rerum Novarum, which is basically

new things.

And he's talking about the Industrial Revolution.

He's talking about, wow, you know, we have this really, this odd thing now, right?

We've gone from this kind of artisan medieval sort of economy to the situation where people, you know, there's a lot of employees, right?

That's a different relationship than, you know, than like an understudy would have been in an artisan context, right?

And so how ought we to deal with these sorts of things?

How ought we to treat each other?

And what role does the state have, right?

So every 10 years after that, that encyclical came out in 1891.

Every 10 years after that, there was a there was a celebration about Raren Ravarn because it was such a big turning point for public, the Catholic public, the Catholic world on these issues.

So I would say the other two really big ones are Quadra, JC Moano, which just means 40 years.

So usually cyclicals are titled by the first like phrase that's at the very beginning of the letter.

And so I think Pope Pius XII wrote that and he said,

40 years ago, right?

So this one came out in 1931, right?

40 years before that was Ramdevaram.

And then Sintessimus Annus, which is 100 years.

That one was written by Pope JP II in 1991.

So I would say lesser influence, maybe, but still an important thing.

So you see Pope Leo, he's taking this name Leo.

Well, he could have been referring to Pope Leo the 9th or something for all I know, right?

But what we think is going on in his head, and he's talked about this to some extent, right?

So now we're talking about somebody who was a mathematician, right?

are interested in engineering and technology and these sorts of things.

And he's seeing AI as a big force.

And so similar to the way that Leo the 13th is looking at the Industrial Revolution, now hopefully the 14th, 130 years later, is saying, hey, maybe we should take a look at this AI thing.

How does this deal?

How should we deal with this as people?

What are good ways to use this thing?

What are bad ways to use this thing?

What are our limits?

Right?

So, you know, I think the consensus is that that's why he took that name, because he wants to address that.

I have a question for, like, the constraints on a pope.

In the same way that we would think, like, well, there's just kind of checks and balances in the United States version of government or whatever, at least in theory.

Are the constraints on a pope's action contemporary?

Or are they more

historical in the sense that a pope needs to make sure that these encyclicals that they put out are in a cord with

what yeah yeah so you know it's it's kind of um i i guess the way i would the way i would think about is just like you know i'm just some guy right so like what is you know my ability to say that you know i disagree or something like that or i'm gonna ignore this or that right pretty limited while the pope is there while he's alive and he's

the Pope.

It's sort of like, I mean, you know, we use phrases like Supreme Pontiff, right?

Like a reference to Rome, right?

So it's very keen kind of language, right?

Caesar, that sort of thing.

You know, when when he's writing about these things, you know, yeah, I think there's to some extent this careful reference to the past, right?

There's a lot of references in those encyclicals to Bible or to prior encyclicals as well.

But

you know, one of the things about it is just that it's more about, and especially in this kind of case, it's more about just kind of applying things to something new.

And so, you know, there's certainly a continuity, and yeah, I would say for sure has, you know, the Pope has a responsibility for that continuity on some level, right?

You know, on what we would call a doctrinal level, right?

So about doctrine itself, you know, if he's going to compel, you know, all Catholics around the world to believe a certain thing,

then he's going to be very careful about that.

But if he's talking about an application of something, it's like, OK, well, things get a little bit different.

So for instance, just because we haven't heard much from Pope Leo XIV yet in my mind, Pope Francis talked a lot about refugees and immigration and all of that sort of thing.

And so what you'll see is people will take that and they'll say, oh, well, that applies to this situation in this way.

And it's like, well, look, that's not really his role.

The catechism flat out says governments have

the right to protect their borders, Tim, to set rules for these things.

And so unless the Pope calls the president and just says, hey, you need to change this thing, that's not what he's saying.

So I guess my answer would be that our belief is that the Pope is protected from error on issues of faith and morals.

So on issues of doctrine, the Pope's not going to tell us something that's just totally wrong.

But

could he get bad advice from someone about some specific issue and then make a prescription in an encyclical say, oh, well, you know, you know, everybody should, you know, eat ham on Thursdays, right?

Well, if that's a, if that's a moral issue, then okay, well, that's where we're at, right?

But if it's a practical type of issue, then it's potentially, you know, not as forceful, I would say.

Things that like, you know, a past pope focused on, maybe we don't focus quite so much on it, maybe it's just sort of like,

We have a short memory.

We don't have to go too far down the rabbit show, but there's actually a good paper in the Journal of Economics and Governance called The Invalidability of the Pope.

It's by Mario Ferrero.

And he makes the argument that in papal infallibility, yes, sounds like a papal infallibility itself is a constraint on the pope, because if you and constraint in a good way.

because if you believe that the Pope's decisions are infallible with respect to faith and morals, then the Pope has to be very careful with not making obviously self-contradictory statements on faith and morals because that undermines the whole system, right?

If you don't think the Pope's infallible, for example, in the Church of England, you have the Archbishop of Canterbury, well, that guy can make mistakes because they don't think he's infallible and they don't make any claim.

But because of that,

They

have actually, but

he like the Archbishop of Canterbury has made a lot of mistakes, right?

There's no constraint.

And so that I think actually infallibility does operate successfully that way.

And I'm not saying, you know, the the Catholic view is obviously that it's the Holy Spirit that protects.

I don't think these things would be mutually exclusive, to be honest, but I think infallibility is in itself.

a reason why when a lot of the Protestant denominations liberalized in the late 20th century, Catholic Church didn't on the issues of marriage and birth control and all that stuff.

I think the reason is because people in fallibility sort of constrained the Catholic Church in an interesting way.

Well, that looks like a good spot for a break.

So when we come back, I think we got a lot more to hit on that.

How are the Pope, so to speak, and those are good ways to think about it and how it influences behavior of people.

So we'll be back in

just a bit.

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All right, so we're back and I wanted to kind of add on to what we left off with in regard to the church.

I don't know if I want to use the word doctrine or customs, evolving over time.

I had Catholic friend Jaime Fuentes, who was a professor here, once said that, you know, because I kind of was, I don't know, challenging or saying, oh, the Pope can do anything they want, kind of the infallibility thing.

And he said, well, no, that's okay.

It's an evolving church, whereas a lot of the, let's call it Bible-based

you know, the Bible's it.

Like everything sticking to the Bible and there's not as much coming out.

There's always interpretation of, you know, birth control, divorce, whatever of what that means.

But I took it more stronger than that, that the Catholic Church is evolving.

And I think you rightly said, you know, when new things come along like AI, that's that's a good example of how do we apply Catholic

thinking and beliefs system to this new thing.

And so I wonder if you could just comment on that a little bit more.

I mean, do you think of the Catholic Church as an evolving church?

Because I always thought of like the Lutheran church being more just fixed, I guess, in my mind in some way, shape, or form, but everything's kind of evolving in some way, shape, or form.

So.

Yeah, so I mean I would I would probably very heavily disagree with the framing and of course I'm getting maybe I mean I need to have a conversation.

Oh, sure.

Yeah, but I mean just like the general framing there I think so my general view about a lot of things in our in Western society is that the 1960s were sort of a culmination of all kinds of horrible nonsense from the past and so I think as a human institution, you know, you know that that effect that general social

malaise or degeneration in a lot of ways was not spared on the Catholic Church too, right?

I mean, you know, there was a lot of things, a lot of the people involved in that, you know, in the church at that time fell under that same spell of that sort of thing.

And so some of the things that we would categorize under what we call a discipline, right, rather than a doctrine, some of those disciplinary types of things or

rules about how things work in a specific way, like liturgy, for instance, were changed.

Now, I think people are correct that if you read the Vatican II documents, the people who were in charge took the letter of that a lot farther than they really should have.

And so now, for instance, right?

So just as an example, right?

The priest used to always face what we call face east.

So the tabernacle would always be put on the east side of the chapel, right?

But then we said, OK, well, maybe you literally have to do that because, you know, you just you're using a building for a church even though it wasn't built for that purpose, right?

Maybe you're actually building

codes and I

can only build the church and certainly.

Sure.

There you go.

So what we said was OK, the priest is still facing East in the sense that he's facing the Tabernacle.

He's facing Christ.

So one of the things that happened is that there was a line in the new mass from the sixties that was that the priest would turn around and face the public.

face the congregation for a specific part of the mass.

Well, then the people in charge of that time said, you know what, let's just do that the whole time.

Let's just move the altar away from the wall and have the priest stand behind that altar.

And their whole mindset was, okay, well, this is like a meal, it's a feast, blah, blah, blah, this sort of thing, which is not necessarily bad.

imagery, right?

But the reasons for it weren't necessarily, you know, all of that, all that great, right?

There's not necessarily a good reason to deviate from the script in the right way.

Certainly not.

Yeah, keeping consistent historically.

Right.

Yeah.

So what you'll see now, at least at the parish I go to, the millennial generation, our millennial generation of priests

is very, very conservative relative to the people who became priests in the 60s, right?

Basically the boomers and a lot of Gen X. They were a lot more politically left-wing.

And so what is happening is you have priests that are like my age that are like, you know, we're just going to follow the actual letter of the rules that were written down in the 60s.

We're more old school.

Yes.

So like the priests here in town.

Father Kenneth Clinton wears a cassock.

He wears a cassock.

Even in summer.

Even in the summer, it's a black.

It's like basically a gown, right?

It's a black thing.

It's got sleeves all the way to his ankles.

My priest, we go to a parish up in Gardner, Kansas, which isn't too far away for other reasons.

But priests up there, same thing, cassock.

All the servers, they're all boys.

They all wear cassocks.

They're all dressed like the priests so that they kind of get that idea like, hey, this could be part of my life.

You know, I could become a preacher.

And he does.

He faces east the whole time.

You know, he turns around for that one spot that he's supposed to turn around with priests here in town.

He wears a manifold.

It's like this little cloth and it's supposed to symbolize something from a long time ago.

And he wears it at mass, not all the time, but at mass.

He actually, Father Ken, he also wears like the big hat, the big broad-brimmed black hat.

Really?

Yeah.

So he's.

a ball on top too.

Yeah, that one too.

I think it's, yeah, I can't remember.

Zucchetto?

Yeah.

Something like that.

Yeah.

And he's, and he's just like a country dude from, from Osage City.

Yeah.

You know, he's like, but, but it's, but it is interesting to see this kind of pushback against.

the mindset of the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Yeah.

If you don't mind me hopping in here, Levi, with respect to Russ's comment is one way to think about this question is to think about the extremes.

So on one extreme, you have the Orthodox churches and the Orthodox churches claim whether or not the claim is true is a different question, but they claim that they haven't changed anything since the apostles.

And so they say that everything that we believe is the same as the apostles believed all the literatories that we do with the exception of a translation are all the liturgies that the apostles did.

And even, you know, even the

the allergies we use are super early.

And so they don't believe that doctrine can develop or change.

So the apostles believed in the Trinity the same way that we believe in the Trinity.

You know, the apostles believed in, you know, all of the Mary doctrines that the Orthodox sold to, which isn't the same as what the Catholics sold to.

Whereas Catholics are more permissive after John Henry Newman of the idea of doctrinal developments.

That is the seed of all of what we believe today existed with the apostles, but some of it had to be developed in terms of thinking.

And so

The Catholicism does allow more breathing room with respect to, I wouldn't say evolution, but development of doctrine in a way that orthodoxy doesn't.

And I would actually say, maybe in contrast with what Russ had, I think a good Protestant church has that view too, because I actually think it's ahistorical to say that no doctrine is developed.

I think, for example, it's really hard to find.

with the apostles, the veneration of icons.

I think you can find that later and you can find a development from the apostles, but it's hard to find it, you know, 30 AD.

But they have really extreme version is like the, some of the main line Protestants who now have thought that they've decided everything's up for grabs in terms of development.

And so, you know, we can have gay marriages and female pastors and all that stuff.

Yeah, so I see the Catholic Church as being sort of the middle of these two extremes of we're totally ossified, no changing anything at any point.

Again, I'm not sure I accept that historical claim, but that's what they say versus like everything's on the table.

Catholics say doctrine can be developed, but it can't be changed, right?

Right.

And I think a really good analogy for that that I've heard is like, if you walk from one room that's lit up really bright, and then you walk into a very dark room, like at first,

your eyes aren't adjusted very well to the darkness, and it's hard to see anything.

But as your eyes adjust, you start to see things better.

And so this is, and I'm a big analogy guy, I love analogies.

So to me, this is a great way of understanding, like what you're saying is a sort of middle of the road kind of view, is that we're walking into this room, and over time, we're learning things, we're understanding things better.

And so we have these different things that come about like,

Oh man, like the Marian dogma that came about like early.

The assumption.

Yeah, the assumption purgatory isn't the one that orthodox say it wasn't original, you know.

Right.

So, you know, there is this analogy of like, yeah, we're just we're getting better at seeing things.

And of course, you know, maybe it's a, you know, it takes time.

And of course, we do take our time with these sorts of things.

I think people would agree with that.

But

But yeah, I think that analogy, the room analogy is really good.

I'm always fascinated by the Catholic Church because I think it has some interesting characteristics that maybe a lot of other denominations don't have.

And one of the things that I think is really interesting about the history of the Catholic Church is, well, I recently read a book on Vatican I and, you know, Catholic Church has, in its history, there were like the Papal States where the Catholic Church has also been not just a kind of spiritual institution, but like

a bona fide political history as well.

So do you have any thoughts and meshed up?

But like, do you think the church benefits from having this history as an actual arbiter of conflicts within a territory like as

state?

Does that come with baggage or does it help it navigate some of these new issues as they come up?

Yeah.

So I mean, I think, I think the main problem that that would cause, I think,

is when people try to apply this kind of very broad thinking to specific more localized issues.

So I think it's a great thing in the sense that when you have to try to, when you have the institutional knowledge of taking many, many different things into account and making a decision about them, I think, I mean, the more history you have doing that sort of thing is better.

And so to the extent that, you know, the Catholic Church has

influence in the world, I think that that institutional knowledge is really beneficial.

All right.

Well, that looks like a good spot to wrap.

Any other closing thoughts or words?

Great.

All right.

Well, Levi, it's been a pleasure to have you on.

Talk through some of these issues.

Thanks.

This has been a production of the Gorton Institute here at Ottawa University.

I'd like to thank you all for listening.

A five-star rating helps other people find us.

Otherwise, just pass this along to people that might like to take a listen.

Other than that, be fruitful and multiply.

Thanks.

you

If you're enjoying this KXEL podcast, then we invite you to listen to KXEL's great programming in real time too!

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It's where Iowa comes to talk, News Talk 1540, KXEL.

What another glorious Saturday morning here in eastern Iowa John Jacobson with you on the Jacobson report on KXEL North America's original 50,000 watt blowtorch clear channel at 1540 also on our FM 100.5 and caramang around the ether space in the galaxy on KXEL.com or just Google in listen live on KXEL and this show always on podcast the following

Monday we are here at the mid break of this wonderful show today these hot

summer days of high temps and fleeting storms with a great Barbara Hames Bryant the matriarch of Hames homes those beautiful affordable safe manufactured homes in southeast southwest Cedar Rapids there by the airport by all sorts of retail and Barbara it is you know I think so highly of you Barbara that I would say

Barb for Congress, if a seat were ever to open up there in your district.

Oh, hello, John.

You are always the flatterer, aren't you?

You are so sweet.

Yeah, no.

I love doing what I'm doing and selling beautiful, affordable, attractive homes.

The Eastern Iowa families is what I love to do.

I think I'll keep doing this instead of running for public office.

You know, Barbara, I can't think of a better vocation than to bring beautiful, safe, affordable homes to families.

It's the basic building block of society, even on Maslow's hierarchy.

Safe and beautiful and affordable homes is right there as that pillar.

Even your family have been doing this now multi-generationally for decades.

You are worthy custodians and you're that rock of stability, roots, and character at Summit and Grand and Barbara.

Let's refresh the memory of our folks.

We had Curtis on last week.

He did his usual super job, but you are one generation ahead of Curtis.

You are your father's daughter.

Refresh our folks about this great family legacy you've got going there at Hame's Homes.

Well, my parents started this business in 1969.

Kurt and Norma Haynes, the home people, after they retired, they're both military veterans.

They both served in the army.

They did.

Kurt retired.

Norma served during the Korea War.

So after Kurt retired, he decided he was in his 40s, was really too young to stop working, and he'd always wanted to own a business.

And he thought, you know, people can always use housing that'll never go out of style.

Right.

It'll never become obsolete.

It'll just keep getting better.

So he and my mom decided to move from Joplin, Missouri to Marion, Iowa, because my mom liked the schools here.

Now she confessed later on that she didn't even think about how cold the winters would get

here.

There's a difference.

I have students from Joplin and there's quite a big difference in weather, especially in winter.

You're correct.

Yes, and she admitted that she didn't even consider the cold winters, but I did get that good Iowa education that Iowa's famous for, so it turned out to be a good move.

And now my brother and sister and I, Troy, Barbara Cynthia, run the business, and we have our third generation here, of which Curtis Heames IV is one.

Um, and my son works here, Sean Bryant, and Troy's son in law, Clint Alderman, is also in our sales department.

Guys, these are folks.

that you can shake hands and look at them eye to eye and you know they're going to stand behind a deal.

They want what's best for you and what's best for the community as evidenced by the painstaking attention they give to even vetting applicants to make sure that these are safe people living in these communities.

If you drive by their two little mini cities, they are beautifully sculpted and landscaped.

American flags, beautiful streets lit by fine lighting, and the streets are new.

You've got a food pantry, you've got Frisbee Golf, you've got dog parks.

Barbara, it's really astonishing.

You build communities.

We do, and when you say the word communities, that confuses some people sometimes because they think it's cities and towns.

But a community is a place where people have common interests.

The Hams community's grand view and summit view are both planned and privately managed communities.

As you said, people need to apply to get in.

so that we screen residents so you know you're not living next door to a sex vendor or drug dealer.

And we also have on-site management which keeps these communities looking just pristine.

Our common areas are second to none.

They are, I urge you to go out and drive by there.

And I urge you to go to that wonderful website, HAMES, that's H-A-M-E-S, HOMES, H-O-M-E-S, HAMES, HOMES, dot com.

And you know, there's more than just a literal roof over the head.

It does take a community that supports a family lifestyle.

And you talked about that earlier.

You guys were built for family life.

You've got required background checks and everything is owner occupied, no sub leasing.

It's very kid-friendly with a lot of green space and even the safe playgrounds you guys do it all Barbara

We welcome family with young kids as well as retirees singles and multi-generational household Remember that we call the manufacturer of home communities, but they used to be called mobile home parks They did for that.

They were called trailer corks.

They were so I think calling the manufacturers home communities the word community means that people all have a

something common and interest, interest in common and that you can certainly consider that the case here because of our beautiful neighborhoods, people really look out for each other.

Well, it's so true.

And I just tell everybody go over there, look at both summit view and grand view.

There are hundreds of units in each of these communities and they're spacious.

Barbara, what I love about it is you've got the best of both worlds.

It reminds me of Marion, the northeast side of Marion, where I grew up as a child.

First up there at 25th Avenue, Northview, when we were the most northeast residents.

in Marion at the time who would believe that today looking back at 1964 but Barbara you guys are literally in a rural background but yet you're basically

Two to three minutes from major retail, including a Menards and all the restaurants and other infrastructure, and 10 to 15 minutes from the airport.

What a great geographic location.

From Iowa City, if you're going to school there or you got kids there, you're 15, 20 minutes max to the hospitals.

Oh, and don't forget about Kirkwood Community College.

You can get there in just a few minutes.

Great point.

And the Imana colonies and Whirlpool Imana.

Another, oh gosh, 15, 20 minutes at the max.

We're in a super location.

People love it here.

And if you're not going to university hospitals, the two other fine hospitals in the Cedar Rapids Metro are within about five minutes away from where you are there.

So it's a magnificent location.

Barbara?

This is the perfect time.

August is moving month.

People literally one of the most highly trafficked months for moving.

People go into a retirement mode.

They look to get close to children and grandchildren.

College kids look for safe, affordable alternative housing to being sandwiched in a dorm or residence hall with Iowa City being so close by.

We got a lot of people listening in today, Barbara.

Thousands of folks.

This signal literally goes to 14 states.

We know a lot of kids are coming in to Iowa City and Sea Rapids for School, Co-College, Cornell's Not Far Away, all these nice little other division and NAIA schools.

Barbara, how can they find you?

I've alluded to Hame's homes, but what about telephone and what about coming for an actual visit and a drive-by?

We love it when people come to visit our communities.

Our sales office is at the corner of Wilson Avenue and West Post Road in Cedar Rapids.

That's Wilson Avenue, West Post Road in Cedar Rapids.

Our model homes are open seven days a week, and there's a housing consultant here seven days a week to answer questions, including about financing.

To call us, it's our old Marion phone number.

We still have it.

319-377-487.

That's 319-377-4863.

It's

a beautiful Marion Legacy number.

It is only a few digits off my mother's number that she still has had for well over 60 years.

Barbara, Tony Forsinger says, living in this wonderful, safe and clean area is our dream come true.

And looking at the listings, you've got

Some beautiful homes here.

There's a pre-owned home for just under 50,000.

You've got a nice one there on Mitchell Street for 65,000.

You've got one on Glacier Street for about 115,000.

These are spacious.

They've got beautiful siding.

The garage on this one on Glacier Street is very handsome.

Barbara, you've got units available.

The best way to see our very vast inventory is to go to hamshomes.com.

H-A-N-E-S-H-O-N-E-S dot com.

We have all our homes there for sale.

We're very transparent.

The price there is our best price, so there's no haggling.

Right.

And there's a way that you can also take those listings and you can share them with your friends.

Say, hey, you want to go to Cedar Rapids with me?

Exactly.

This beautiful double section along Luke

Street.

Exactly.

Guys, affordable.

manufactured homes in eastern Iowa.

Go to that website, hamshomes.com.

See how easy home ownership can be.

Folks, we're talking comfort, beauty, and value in eastern Iowa.

These spacious and attractive manufactured home communities in Grandview and Summitview, you.

belong in a Haymes home.

Barbara Haymes Bryant, so delighted to be back with you again this Saturday.

I'm coming out for a Hawkeye game early at Kinnock this season.

Can't wait to see you.

look forward to it, John.

Barbara Haymes Bryant, guys.

We had Curtis on last week.

Who knows who will be on next Saturday.

It might even be another one of the Hames men.

Stay tuned.

In the meantime, Barbara for Congress, Barbara for

Congress.

This is Dr. Russ McCullough, Professor and Wayne Angel Chair of Economics here at Ottawa University in Ottawa, Kansas, right here in the heart of the Midwest.

I founded the Gortney Institute, a think and teach tank back in 2018.

We've been building and building on student programs.

We have a capital campaign right now.

for our goal of one million dollars.

It's going to take small donations and big donations to make that happen, but it's all part of an overall capital campaign for Ottawa University.

The Institute includes two other professors, Dr. Peter Jacobson in Economics and Dr. Justin Clark in Philosophy.

Where else can you find a place that has student programs of debates, movie nights, speaker nights?

book clubs, colloquiums, and game nights.

Where else could you find a university that's providing that kind of education to students?

If you want to learn more about what we believe and teach, check out our Faith in Economics podcast.

It's available on all the major channels.

You'll see that the titles we have really show what we discuss with students on a daily basis.

This capital campaign is important.

Donations big and small are welcome.

Contact me directly at Russ McCulloch at Ottawa.

edu.

That's r-u-s-s dot m-c-c-u-l-l-o-u-g-h at Ottawa o-t-t-a-w-a dot edu.

Or just call me directly 785-242-2558.

That's 785-242-2558.

Love to chat with you more about our programs and what we do for students here at Ottawa.

Thanks.

Welcome to our show today.

My name is Peter Jacobson.

I'm the Gortney Professor of Economic Education and Research.

Joining us today we have Dr. Justin Clark, the Menard Family Professor of Philosophy and Ethics.

Dr. Russ McCullough, the Wayne Angel share of economics and founder of the Courtney.

All right.

Well, we got an email in from a listener, Austin C, and had a couple of podcast topics that we'll try to hit.

So we're just going to hit one today.

And he asked about utility.

So utility is a concept in economics that we use to kind of reflect happiness.

It's not maybe

Happiness isn't a perfect substitute, but something that is measuring welfare of somebody.

So here's his question.

I discuss the idea of utility a lot in classes, particularly with entry-level students, to help them grasp trade-offs, the free market, and etc.

However, when we get into the weeds with conversation, the biggest hold-up on the student's end is how economists can put a value on human life when doing a cost-benefit analysis.

Therefore, as a Christian,

How might we do these formulas of utility when it comes to things like loss of life, sin, or other things that are hard to put a value on?

Oh, I want to throw it to Dr. Jacobson, I guess, to lead off.

Sure.

I think the best way to start off is to just explain to the audience the concept of utility and economics.

So in economics, we are trying to explain more or less why in particular circumstances, especially when circumstances are changing, that's kind of the key, how behavior will change with those changing circumstances.

So for example, if you have an increase in income, what's that going to do to your consumption of ramen noodles?

Or what's it going to do to the amount of leisure time that you spend?

Those are the sorts of questions that economics asks.

how will people change their resource use patterns when their institutional environment or personal situation changes?

That's kind of the the go-to thought in economics at the micro level.

And that was kind of what he was talking about trade-offs to highlight trade-offs.

Yeah.

But I so this in order to discuss this

question economists use different concepts.

So one of the concepts we use is utility.

Utility is the idea that you get a certain amount of enjoyment from doing certain activities, whether that's consuming certain goods or like enjoying certain services or just leisure.

All of these things in an economist's mind come with a certain sense of satisfaction that we call utility.

And in particular, economists are interested in what's called marginal utility.

So how much enjoyment do you get from eating one more apple?

or going on one more vacation, or from having one less car, how much marginal utility would you lose?

Or how much utility would you lose?

That's the concept of marginal utility.

And so one of the things that economists will say is, if the marginal utility of something is greater than the marginal cost of something, people will do that thing.

In other words, if you get more enjoyment from a thing that costs you...

then you're willing to engage in that activity now only individuals have utility companies don't have utility so you know that changes when we talk about companies but that's the idea now utilities kind of a tricky concept because

Economists don't really believe utility is real, at least not the ones who kind of properly track with the method.

In other words, there's not like, and some economists have tried to do this, by the way.

I'm not saying none do, but smart economists don't try.

That's maybe cruel to this.

Economists don't generally try to go into a lab and measure brain changes and say, oh, that brain change represents 4,000 utility or something like that.

No, utility is a way that we think about conceptually.

the benefits people get from certain things.

In other words, utility is a feature of our model to understand the world.

It's not necessarily a feature of the world, right?

We don't believe that people get ex-utilities from apples or something like that.

Instead, it's just a way to think about the satisfaction people get.

That's how I think about utility.

The key finding with utility, if we're being good economists in consistency, is that utility cannot be compared to interpersonal.

In other words, we can't say that Russ's enjoyment of an apple is greater necessarily than my enjoyment of an apple.

We could say that he's more willing to pay for apples, but we can't go into somebody's brain and say, certainly, oh, the total utility

is getting as greater than the total utility.

I would only push back a little bit when you said we can't put X utility because I think we claim we can put a number on it but then that number can't be compared.

So for example, an apple gives me 100 units of satisfaction.

Russ, if I give you a second apple, how much does that give you?

Well, it's not 100 anymore because I already had one apple.

So maybe 30 units of happiness.

But then Peter gives his numbers.

Those numbers can't be compared with each other.

Yeah, they're not complicated.

in the sense that they're ordinal, not cardinal.

And so I can say the second apple was less enjoyable than the first, but I can't say it was one and a half times less enjoyable.

That is where utility theory gets sort of weird.

And so all of this, so what's the point people might say?

Well, that helps us learn things about people.

One of the laws in economics is the law, you're decreasing marginal utility.

that representing what Russ just said, that is if people get more of something, everything else have constant, they're going to enjoy it less and less and less.

So the first scoop of ice cream is the most enjoyable, second scoop a little bit less, the thousandth scoop, the marginal utility solo is negative and you wouldn't even want, if I could give it to you for free, you wouldn't want to eat a thousand scoops of ice cream.

All right.

And so this is the idea of utility.

I want to also add what Dr. Todd Sandler said to me in my PhD public econ class.

He's like, OK, so we all know that we can't add up utility, but we're going to create a social utility function anyway.

And then it leads to policy decisions.

So that's where Peter and I both agree that the economic expression goes wrong.

And this kind of speaks to Austin's question on how would you really use utility with valuing in terms of cost-benefit analysis of some policies and other things?

As Peter just said, it gets

kind of wonky when you start trying to use it for some sort of social gaining, social welfare gaining maneuver.

Just to put one more thing in perspective, I like to give this example.

So my wife tells me, I said, I'm going to go out fishing the next four hours.

And she says, oh, you love fishing more than me.

And I'm like, no, honey, you don't understand the difference between total utility and marginal utility.

I totally love you more than fishing.

But at the margin this next four hours, I actually like fishing more than spending time with you because

I've already

spent a lot of time with you and I love you way more.

But the incremental benefits of me going fishing on the next four hours.

So that usually falls flat on its face, but that is kind of the difference in why it's important in decision making at the margin.

It's always the incremental benefits and costs of the next move that you're focusing in on to be efficient.

Justin.

Well, I think everything that's been said so far might be wrong.

I don't think we have a good definition of utility.

I think that we have two maybe competing definitions.

And I think that there are some problems when we try to define utility coherently.

One thing that I want to point out, I really want to hammer in on one thing Peter said, which is that utility is often thought of.

And Peter said it's something that doesn't exist in the world.

I'm not sure I want to go that far, but I think he's 100% correct that we think of it, or a lot of people think of it as a kind of theoretical postulate.

That is, it's not directly observed.

We postulate it in order to make other people's actions and even our own actions for ourselves in some sense rational.

So it's a theoretical postulate in that sense.

There are, there have been cases where theoretical postulates turned out

to correspond to actual properties of the world.

one

is like valence.

In the advent of chemistry, people wanted to explain why certain atoms combined with each other more readily in the ratios that they did.

And let's just say certain items have these valence.

And later we learned that we can explain valence in terms of electrons on an outer ring or something like that.

But when Russ was talking about utility in the beginning, he said utility is something that economists use to approximate well-being or something like that.

And so this is where I actually think the problem of using utility in economics stems from.

I don't think it's eradicable, but I don't think that's bad for economics.

I just think you need to be very clear about what we're doing, which is one view of utility is that utility is the best we can do at measuring well-being, right?

And the problem with that is that there's a 3,000-year literature in answer to the question, what is well-being?

Boring.

That's very, very...

It's getting awfully philosophical.

And we end up with a bunch of different theories about what counts as well-being.

And some of these theories entail that there are no trade-offs with well-being.

There's only one thing that we want to maximize, which is happiness.

And then utility would just mean happiness, right?

But a lot of other theories of well-being say things like happiness or even pleasure.

isn't the only thing that makes us well off.

There are other things that make us well off too.

And then it's going to be hard to come up with utilities in the sense that we often want them for when we are making comparisons, and especially mathematical comparisons.

And so one move you could make and that is often made is, well, let's just

Well being is kind of tough, but let's just talk about happiness.

Happiness itself is difficult to measure, so we could measure that in terms of like, amount of dollars someone's willing to pay or something like that, right?

And so once we do that though, we are simplifying our model because we think that it's difficult to come up with

a model of the way things really are.

So we should simplify the model and this will make our calculations easier.

think that sometimes happens, but I think you can make a strong argument that like the willingness to pay for something is in itself a very good way to measure like how things should be distributed.

Okay, but wait.

So if we make this move from

simplifying our model to make the calculations easier, then we always raise the possibility that in the simplification, it has meant that our models will sometimes give us the wrong answers.

That's

just a nature of the simplification.

Yeah, related to the original goal.

Yeah.

Yeah, in the sense that it's like our map is no longer like any map, usually maps are useful because they simplify the territory.

Yeah.

But because they simplify the territory,

they're not sometimes Denny's is on the map

yeah

or you know it's like it's it's a couple hundred feet away from where it was yeah and so

This is a feature of maps and models that they simplify and make things easier to understand and make things more rational.

I mean, the most accurate map is just the territory,

right?

So can I hop in here and kind of color with some like real world rubber hitting road stuff?

Because I think that was embedded into this question is like, well, how do we talk about how economists think about like the value of life and stuff like this?

Yeah.

I think the reason this matters is, as Justin mentioned, sometimes what economists will do as a next step is say, OK,

let's take all of this and conceptually use this idea of like willingness to pay instead of utility.

And by the way, I do want to say instead of utility, earlier I made an argument that like we couldn't compare Russ and my utility for a certain good.

And some economists would respond, well, what about willingness to pay?

Like if Russ is willing to pay $5 and you're willing to pay $10, doesn't that mean that Russ gets a higher marginal utility?

And the answer is no.

The reason the answer is no is because we don't necessarily have the same marginal utility of money, right?

And so

$10 to me might be worth more than $5.

That's an example.

Or just preferences, right?

Some people might be okay with having lower amounts of wealth or income, right?

I think that's probably actually true.

Some people are probably okay with just having less money.

And so, no, even using willingness to pay, we can't make these cross person utility comparisons.

But we can make willingness to pay comparisons, right?

And so the economic framework and all of welfare economics, which I don't like welfare economics, but basically what it does is it assumes some distribution of property and then it assumes that that's the right distribution of property.

So when we talk about Russ's bank account, we're assuming that Russ has all of his money and he's supposed to have the money.

And my bank account, I have all of my money and I'm supposed to have that money and so on.

So that's the distribution of property.

And then it says, given that distribution of property, the best solution is the one where the people who are most willing to pay for resources are the ones who get those resources.

And the people who are unwilling to pay for resources don't get those resources.

And that's generally how welfare economics works.

All right.

Well, that looks like a good spot to wrap.

Again, your faith in Christ Jesus alone is the only way that you get into that infinite status of heaven that is talked about.

So check it out if you haven't done so.

This has been a production of the Gorton Institute here at Ottawa University.

I'd like to thank Ella for listening.

Please pass this along to your friends and family that might like to take a listen.

Other than that, be fruitful and multiply.

Thanks.

Hi, this is Dr. Russ McCullough, Professor and Wayne Angel Chair of Economics here at Ottawa University.

That's Ottawa, Kansas, right here in the Midwest.

I founded the Gortney Institute, a think and teach tank here, and we have a capital campaign going on right now where we're trying to raise one million dollars total.

We need donations both big and small, and we hope that you'll think it's a great place to invest your money where college education looks a little bit different than where it does in other places.

We have student programs like debates, movie nights, speaker nights,

book clubs, colloquiums, and game nights, topics including immigration, federalism, the Constitution, individual freedom, Bitcoin, voluntary exchange, free enterprise, rule of law, faith, family, community, and local self-governance.

Where else are people sharing these types of ideas with high school and college age students?

If you want to learn more about what we teach and believe, check out our Faith in Economics podcast that comes out weekly.

There you'll see the types of things that we talk to students about every day here at Ottawa.

This capital campaign is important, so please contact me directly if you'd like to give.

That's Russ.McCullough at Ottawa.edu, R-U-S-S dot M-C-C-U-L-L-O-U-G-H at OttawaOTTAWA.edu.

Or you can just give me a call, 785-242-2558.

That's my direct line here at the university.

785-242-2558.

you